Functional JavaScript: Introducing Functional Programming with Underscore.js

Michael Fogus

Jun 2013 · "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

About this ebook

How can you overcome JavaScript language oddities and unsafe features? With this book, you’ll learn how to create code that’s beautiful, safe, and simple to understand and test by using JavaScript’s functional programming support. Author Michael Fogus shows you how to apply functional-style concepts with Underscore.js, a JavaScript library that facilitates functional programming techniques. Sample code is available on GitHub at https://github.com/funjs/book-source.

Fogus helps you think in a functional way to help you minimize complexity in the programs you build. If you’re a JavaScript programmer hoping to learn functional programming techniques, or a functional programmer looking to learn JavaScript, this book is the ideal introduction.

• Use applicative programming techniques with first-class functions
• Understand how and why you might leverage variable scoping and closures
• Delve into higher-order functions—and learn how they take other functions as arguments for maximum advantage
• Explore ways to compose new functions from existing functions
• Get around JavaScript’s limitations for using recursive functions
• Reduce, hide, or eliminate the footprint of state change in your programs
• Practice flow-based programming with chains and functional pipelines
• Discover how to code without using classes

Ratings and reviews

It's very interesting to get introduced to the essence of functional programming in a language that's not FP-friendly at all, but impossible to avoid. This book teaches not only how, but why to do functional while also demonstrating how to overcome language limitations in very clever ways.

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About the author

Michael Fogus is software developer with experience in distributed simulation, machine vision, and expert systems construction. He's actively involved in the Clojure and Scala communities.